My son is almost 3. I am sort of struggling with the language to use for fake meats with him. He knows mommy does not eat animals, and he tells people he is an herbivore when asked. What I don't know is what to call his veggie chicken nuggets. Right now, I say veggie chicken. At some point I said pretend chicken, but he was confused because clearly his nugget was in front of him for real and he was really eating it. Same problem with fake chicken. He's cool with tofurky, but we use several brands of the nuggets, so brand name isn't always a great option. Also, quorn being a homonym of corn just confuses the shiitake out of him more. He's just so darn literal. Anyway, is there a better term?

I like chicky nuggets. My problem with veggie nuggets is sometimes I make a nugget shaped thing that is actually made out of vegetables. There are just too many nugget shaped foods in our lives, apparently.

I would use something like veggie nuggets, or vegetarian meats. IMO we should try to avoid using words like fake, faux, pretend, etc. that make it seem like vegetarian food isn't "real" or is somehow inferior to animal meat.

And dads. Now, all plant milks are "coconut milk," whether they are or not. He finds coconut milk acceptable because he thinks of milk directly from a coconut. He loves my smoothies but he knew there was soy or flax or rice milk in there, they would magically become unpalatable.

_________________"This is the creepiest post ever if you don't know who Molly is." -Fee"a vegan death match sounds like something where we all end up hugging." -LisaPunk

yeah, we've been eating a bunch of gardein veggie chicken fillets, and i just was calling them chicken without thinking about it. however, she didn't take up that phrase, on her own she started calling it tofu. i don't know how it's distinguished in her head from regular tofu, but i'm sure i'll discover one day when she requests tofu for dinner and i make the WRONG KIND !!

yeah, we've been eating a bunch of gardein veggie chicken fillets, and i just was calling them chicken without thinking about it. however, she didn't take up that phrase, on her own she started calling it tofu. i don't know how it's distinguished in her head from regular tofu, but i'm sure i'll discover one day when she requests tofu for dinner and i make the WRONG KIND !!

That made me LOL.

This has actually only become an issue in the past couple of weeks because a Native Foods finally opened near us. I wanted him to try the chicken nugget things they have because I thought he would like them more than their mac and cheeze, which I find bland. He wouldn't try them because he knows we don't eat chicken. Doh! I should have called them something else to begin with. Next time we go I'll just call them nuggets or veggie nuggets.

I would use something like veggie nuggets, or vegetarian meats. IMO we should try to avoid using words like fake, faux, pretend, etc. that make it seem like vegetarian food isn't "real" or is somehow inferior to animal meat.

The only meat analogues we do regularly are "veggie sausages" and "fake chicken." I totally use the word fake when describing the fake chicken because it's not really chicken and my kids can understand that (there was some explaining at first because they've seen some meat-eating on TV). Since sausage isn't an animal name, I don't call them fake. I suppose, though, if I felt strongly about not using the word fake, I wouldn't use the animal name and would come up with some other word.

Kind of OT, but when my kids talk about eating meat (like when they see people eating meat on TV -- fish fingers are everywhere on kids TV here, it seems), I am pretty blunt about where the meat comes from and what it is. Some people might think that's harsh for their ages (2 and 4), but I feel like the reality is so harsh, I might as well tell them that it's really from killed animals (I don't go into detail or show them slaughterhouse photos or anything).

i would personally use different names for younger kids to avoid confusion when they go to other places and have other people feeding them. If they call things "chicken nuggets" or some "close" name, an innocent caregiver might assume, "well, i don't really get this vegan thing anyway, but if XX says they ate chicken nuggets last night, then it must be OK to give him chicken nuggets." Then the kid ends up eating dead bird through simple confusion, and doesn't know any better. We had something similar happen with my mom.

Chicky strips come from the fact that they're called like chicken-less strips.

I am also pretty direct with him about what meat is (dead animal) and he knows that chicken is like, the animal chicken and he doesn't eat it. And he knows beef = cow because forking Trader Joes here puts it in their samples sometimes, ruining his day completely. And he knows fish. But, I don't know that he'd know to say no to pork. Hmm.

I'm pretty direct too. Obviously in an age appropriate way, but he knows where meat comes from. We talk about carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores in the context of animals, and we've talked about ourselves in the same context. Because DH is an omni, it forces me to really use non-judgmental language, which I think will serve my kids well in avoiding being preachy and obnoxious. At least I hope so.

As for caregivers, the only people my kids get left with now are my family. My mom has been a vegetarian for 30 something years, my sister has been since 6th grade, and my dad is used to dealing with all of us. I also have an aunt and uncle who are vegan and raised their kids vegan, and the uncle went raw vegan about 7 years back. So my family is pretty cool with dietary restrictions and knowing what's what. DDs teachers have all been really cool about knowing what she can and can't eat, and since dietary restrictions are super common in special needs classes, she is hardly the odd one out.

DEG, do you describe yourselves as herbivores? And if so, has that caused any confusion with kids learning about carnivores/omnivores/herbivores in school?

We haven't thought about this yet, but we call analogues between us adults as their animal names (only applies to chicken patties and chicken nuggets, we don't like other analogues). Maybe we should stop doing that.

Ariann- I say I choose to eat like an herbivore rather than I am an herbivore.

And I just remembered a funny story from my own childhood. I was raised in a kosher home. The only hotdogs I had ever eaten were kosher hot dogs. But my family didn't call them kosher, they just called them hot dogs because the kosher was understood. As a result, i did not know there was more than one kind. When I was 8 I went to a friend's birthday party. I was offered a few choices to eat, and I chose hot dog. I took one bite and it was the most horrifying thing I had ever eaten. I really wish someone told me there was a difference! So I definitely want to make sure my kids know what they are eating before they are old enough to be someplace like a birthday party without me.

we go with just "nuggets" for stuff like those Gardein strips. For cheese - because D is obsessed with the orange Daiya wedges, what the fizzle! - we try to always say "vegan cheese" because we're afraid someone will offer her real cheese sometime. We started just calling other analogues seitan because I noticed her looking confused when we talked about having "duck" in our Thai food, and she generally likes seitan a lot so that helps...but yeah I bet sometimes she's confused about all the different kinds being called seitan.D is not really out of our sight much but I've been trying to foster the idea that if someone offers her food she should always ask "Is it vegan?", and if the person offering says no, she should just say "No thank you". Time will tell if that's gonna work or not - I have the whole bday party scenario in mind as well. In fact, this weekend we have a 2yr old's bday party to go to and while the bday boy's dad is a longtime vegetarian, he is also a chef that cooks hella meat and he once asked us "Wait, what's wrong with cheese? I love cheese!" Sooo, I plan to have a vegan cupcake on hand for D just in case.

Some people are SO WEIRD about cheese, it's like they can't get out of the cheese paradigm! One time my friend and I ordered a pizza with half-cheese and half-no-cheese and when they served it, they were all, "this side just has a little cheese, since you didn't want any."Sometimes I feel like the no-meat thing is so much easier for people to understand than the no-cheese/dairy thing.